Sunday, July 29, 2012

Jamaica High School staff and Senator Tony Avella complained last year to the State about how our students are being denied resources as we phase out. A report has been released by the State Education Department that confirms what we all know: our students are being denied the resources they were assured they would get from the city.

Here is the key portion of the report on resources:

The following findings are based on information ascertained from various

stakeholders including parents, teachers, students, administrators as well

as school and district documents:

No honors or advance placement classes are offered to students

The school no longer offers calculus, chemistry or physics

Only three electives are offered to students: Law, Accounting and Latin American Literature. Prior to the implementation of the phase out model, elective courses offered to students were: African American Literature, Film, Geography, Forensics, Sociology, Psychology, Computer classes (Word, Excel, visual basic, PowerPoint) and Creative Writing

Off­track classes, which were offered to students not meeting Regents requirements, are no longer available

Students are not able to complete specialty programs: Business, Computer Science, Engineering and Finance Institutes, or Art Institutes Students are not offered SAT prep courses

Two teachers, who are not certified in special education, are teaching students with disabilities.

What will the state do about this? We can hope the answer is not the usual nothing.

Friday, July 20, 2012

There is a fantastic piece in the UK's Guardian about the labor dispute between the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union. This article should be read by every teacher, particularly those who believe we can't change the union. Here is an excerpt:

The basis of this dispute (in Chicago) is what is innocuously termed "school reform". This is a process of privatisation and union-busting. Since the 1990s, Chicago has been a laboratory for such reforms, which have been rolled out across the country. The programme enjoys the support of the Democratic leadership as well as leading pro-Obama liberals such as Davis Guggenheim, whose filmWaiting for Superman was a lengthy attack on teaching unions and a tribute to private schools.

Chicago intends to open 60 new privatised, non-union"charter" schoolsin the next five years. Public schools are being closed to make way for this change and capital spendinghas been slashed. The CTU's new leadership has been driving a campaign to tackle chronic underfunding in Chicago schools, and broaden the curriculum. They describe the system as one of "educational apartheid", and demand an elected school board which reflects the needs of the city's population.

But the final provocation was when the "reformers" increased teachers' working hours by 20%, while cutting a promised 4% pay rise in half. They falsely imagined that the CTU would be a pushover, having recently elected a bunch of "rookie" candidates to the leadership.

In fact, the victory of these "rookies", from the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), demonstrated two things. First, it showed the unwillingness of members to be as compliant as the leadership has been in the past. Second, it proved the new leadership's ability as grassroots organisers. They showed the same skill in building support among teachers for strike action in a series of mock ballots and mass publicmeetings.

We are fully behind the Chicago Teachers Union and their president Karen Lewis.

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"Labor cannot stand still. It must not retreat. It must go on, or go under."

Harry Bridges

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UFT Reports Filed With Labor Deparment

Each year our union is required, by law, to file several financial reports. The form, called an LM-2, is available here. This report reflect transactions for the year ending July 31, 2014. It was prepared on December 23, 2014.

Additionally the Department of Labor provides other reports about the UFT. Go to their site and input file number 063-924 at the top and select the type of report you want to review. These files are in spreadsheet format.